Oliver concluded the segment, which included a montage of some of his best moments on the show, in tears. That emotional moment was a surprise to him, too.

“I’m British, so I’m not in touch with anything regarding human emotion,” Oliver said during the Winter TV Tour in Hollywood. “We’re emotional volcanoes. I’m probably next due to erupt into tears in about 45 years.”

Discovering the format of Oliver's new show is going to be one of the current TV season’s big reveals. Oliver has said he won’t be doing many movie star interviews, or borrow too much from “The Daily Show,” but HBO announced Thursday (April 24) that the first episode’s guest interview is Gen. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command.

Sounds pretty “Daily Show” to me, but that would be fine with Oliver’s fans, of which I am hugely one, so no biggie. Bring it on. He’s great in such settings.

Anyway, Oliver’s stint as “Daily Show” pinch-host led directly to his new gig.

“It was probably the main reason why I’m here now,” he said. “It was a bizarre, exciting, and terrifying experience.”

Which, he added, he hasn’t been able to fully evaluate.

“I can’t, really, because I didn’t watch it,” he said. “I did it. So I don’t really know how it went down in general. It’s still on the air, the show. I set myself the achievable goal of just not destroying that particular franchise, so the fact that it’s still there and Jon is still doing it, that I took as a W in the ‘win’ column. I guess it went well. Comedy is subjective. I’m sure some people thought, ‘Get that British imposter off my favorite TV show.’”

Speaking of which, Oliver’s background as a transplant gives him a unique, elevated, long-view, detached -- somebody pick one of these and make me stop -- perspective on America.

“When someone says something that you, as an American resident, find insulting, you can kind of say, ‘Well, yeah. How could you possibly say that about us?’” he said. “And you’re right. ‘They are crazy, aren’t they?’ So you can kind of play it both ways, because I’m of no real fixed abode at the moment. I’m a green card recipient, which means I can’t vote and I am taxed. So that is taxation without representation. And now I get why you got so pissy about it all those years ago.”

Oliver (who also has acted on “Community”) said he consulted with Stewart about making the jump to HBO and had high praise for “The Daily Show” host, who also recently has watched another former correspondent, Stephen Colbert, get picked to move up to “The Late Show” anchor desk.

“He has been invaluable over the last 7 1/2 years of my life in almost everything,” Oliver said of Stewart. “I talked to him about this decision, and he’s been amazing. As a comedian, I’m almost allergic to sincerity, but he has been incredible.

“Jon Stewart has kind of ushered in a Golden Age of (late-night comedy), and he spawned Stephen Colbert -- that’s not an image that I was ideally going to land on -- and has, in turn, spawned me. So that’s a triple-spawn there.

“I’m hoping it’s going to be a Golden Age. To be honest, I’d take a Bronze Age at this point. Bronze Age, that’s not a bad age.”